Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
11 x 8cm, 1pp Artist's card attacking the Follies book published by the National Trust:
ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL TRUST
The certifiable build the abbeys
The sane build the tearooms.
National Trust supported buildings in the UK almost always have a tea-room added to them. On the reverse there is a post-it note on which Finlay has written "A Follies War Card". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
14 x 12.5cm, 2pp artist's card released on the fourth anniversary of the First Battle of Little Sparta. The card quotes Jules Claretie reporting on Louis XVI writing "Nothing" in his diary on the night of the storming of the Bastille (this is unfair on Louis as the reference to "nothing" was actually his recording of a failure to catch anything while hunting but the story is usually told as to prove he was out of touch). Louis was indeed out of touch (he went hunting on that day after all) but that diary entry was not evidence of it but Finlay uses the quote to taunt his enemies' failure to storm the Temple Gallery on that day four years earlier thanks to the actions of the Saint-Just Vigilantes. This card is hand address to Peter Townsend, Editor of Art Monthly by Finlay. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1987)
17 x 13cm, 1pp artist's card with a photograph of a sticker having been stuck to the outside spine of the Follies A National Trust Guide by Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp which Finlay had condemned for misrepresenting Little Sparta as a "folly". The sticker reads "Censored by the Saint-Just Vigilantes". ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
11.8 x 14.1cm, 2pp card. An appropriated drawing of a guillotine is matched with a text which shows only part of the name Headley (---LEY) as if the name of the main author of the National Trust publication "Follies" has been decapitated (the additional joke being that the part removed is the HEAD). Underneath the first there is the French text - "Je perds une tete" and under the guillotine "J'en trouve une" - I have lost a head/I find one. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
13.6 x 8.2cm, 1pp Artist's card presenting a faux menu of Danton, followed by Hebert then Clooz followed by Meulenkamp and Headley. The first three names in order were guillotined under the orders of the Committee for Public Safety, the last two only in Finlay's revengeful fantasies.VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
18 x 13cm, 1pp Artist's card with an appropriated etching from 1793 - "Louis le Traître lis ta Sentence" which translates to "Louis the Traitor, read your sentence" below the image Finlay quotes Ian Barr, the Chairman of the Saltire Society as "He thought Follies an entertaining guide and enjoyed it". Clearly Finlay had added Barr to his enemies list. On the reverse there is a post-it note on which Finlay has written "A Follies War Card". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
12.4 x 18.6cm, 4pp Christmas card black on handmade paper with the text:
Somewhere in the wood was shining the
little red lantern of Christmas...
Minneapolis: Hermetic Press, 1986
7x 5m, 4pp Artist's card with the "dialectic" poem:
river
OCEAN
lake
Lake being the synthesis of the thesis (river) and anti-thesis OCEAN.
Torn edges as per the printing and joint with the original Hermetic Press envelope. VG+. Scarce.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
14 x 18.4m, 1pp Artist's card with a b/w photograph of a field of sheep near Little Sparta by . Finlay writes underneath "The wine-dark sea, the turnip-marbled field" and "The Hyperborean Apollo of Walter Pater's Apollo in Picardy. In little Sparta he is identified with Saint-Just.". Greek mythology is mixed with Finlay's French revolutionary hero and the landscape which is a prosaic, rural version of Arcadia. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
18 x 13cm, 4pp Artist's card black on light blue (to reflect the colour of the flower) with a drawing of the forget-me-not on the front by Stephanie Kedik and a text:
Myosotis Sylvatica
Forget-me-Not
A wild
flower
within
Memory of a loved one is compared to a wild flower growing in the body. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
17.4 x 18.3m, 1pp Artist's card with a b/w photograph by Antonia Reeve of the road up to Little Sparta and the first gate encountered after reaching the sheep field. . Finlay writes underneath "Little Sparta's Eastern Frontier at the time of The First Battle of Little Sparta february 4 1983. The old gate marks the site of the barrier, which has since been removed." Checkpoint Charlie was the nickname for the best known crossing point between East and West Berlin during the cold war. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
3.1 x 13.3cm, 4pp Artist's card printed black and red on white - the word MARAT is extended to MARATAPLAN! Tthe typography and colour changes emphasis the "rataplan!" which is onomatopoeia - the sound of a drumbeat. The open card causes the neologism MARATAPLAN! to be a clarion call for the ideologue Marat. VG+.
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